Pine trees shed their needles every year. The needles, once off the tree are usually referred to as pinestraw. These needles may be used as ground cover or as mulch, especially in home or garden applications. Pinestraw is baled and sold commercially for this purpose from a number of different pine tree species. However, the most desirable type of baled pinestraw is the needle from the Longleaf Pine also called the Southern White Pine or Southern Yellow Pine. This was once the dominant tree species in the southeastern coastal plains of the United States. However, the heart wood of this tree was highly valued as lumber and these forests were logged to the point of exhaustion by the beginning part of the Twentieth Century. The Longleaf Pine is relatively slow growing, compared to other species like the Loblolly Pine. The quicker growing species of pine are grown in pine tree plantations for use as telephone poles and for lumber. However, the pine needles from these species are rarely commercially baled. They are not as durable, nor do they provide as effective a mulch and ground cover as does the pinestraw from the Longleaf Pine.
There are remaining stands of Longleaf Pine and there is a small, but growing, amount of Longleaf Pine being planted and grown commercially for lumber. Although the trees are slow growing and take a long time to mature before the lumber can be harvested, the heart wood of the Longleaf Pine is so durable and beautiful that is can be sold for a premium price for such things as flooring and paneling. Therefore, there is enough Longleaf Pinestraw available to make it commercially feasible to rake and bale this pinestraw for sale to nurseries, home garden centers, and the like for resale at approximately four to five dollars a bale for landscaping or other home use. However, raking and baling pinestraw in a pine forest presents difficulties not usually encountered in an ordinary agricultural operation of raking and baling straw.
There are many power machines designed to rake and bale various types of fibrous material including cotton, wheat straw, hay and the like. For example U.S. Pat. No. 4,401,022, Vissers et al., discloses a device for raking and baling an agricultural crop. There is a power rake device that automatically loads the material raked into a compression chamber where it is compressed into a bale and subsequently ejected from the device. A different device for compressing a crop into bales is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,170,934, Oosterling et al. This discloses a compressing chamber opening and pressing member, along with a feeder mechanism for introducing the crop into the compression chamber. This device is designed to be operated continuously for rapid production of baled crops.
However, these devices, as useful as they may be for baling hay or wheat straw are useless for baling pinestraw. Unlike hay or wheat, which is grown on a prepared and cultivated field, pinestraw is found in forests. It is a serendipitous byproduct and not the outcome of an agricultural program. A mature Longleaf Pine forest will have tree roots, rocks, saplings, vines, bushes, and small trees that like shade, such as Redbud and Dogwood, scattered throughout the floor of the forest where the pinestraw must be raked and baled. The trees themselves, unless planted, grow randomly with no set distances between rows or furrows like one may find in a cultivated wheat or hay field.
To date the pinestraw baling industry is dominated by hand labor. The team of workers first rakes the pinestraw into piles. Then, a hand powered baler is placed near the piles of pinestraw and one bale is prepared at a time by hand labor. The hand operated pinestraw baler consists of a rectangular chamber of the approximate width and depth of a bale of pinestraw, but somewhat longer overall than a finished bale of pinestraw. This rectangular chamber is open at the top with a gate or door running along a length-wise portion of the rectangular chamber. Pinestraw is pushed into the open top of the chamber by a pitchfork. When the chamber is approximately filled to the top, a compressive stroke is applied by a lever-like device which pivots at a point near the top of the rectangular chamber. This compresses the pinestraw to some degree. Usually the chamber has to be filled, then "topped off" several times with a compressive stroke applied after each fill or "top off" to result in one appropriately compact mass of pinestraw. The mass is then tied into a moveable compact bale by twine or wire. The length-wise door is opened and the bale is removed by hand and placed aside. The door is then closed and the process begins again. Considerable effort is required to compress the pinestraw into a bale by means of the hand operated lever and considerable effort is required to remove the completed bale from the compression chamber.
Consequently, it would be an advance in the art to provide mechanically powered pinestraw baler. It should be light enough so that a single operator can maneuver it in a pine forest over tree roots, small bushes and other obstacles. It should be small enough in size to where it will easily fit between pine trees that may be growing close to each other and to be maneuvered around obstacles like rocks or small trees that are too large to go over. It should compress the pinestraw into a bale in a single compressive stroke, simplifying the loading operation. It should automatically eject the baled pinestraw from the compression chamber once the baling process is complete to reduce the physical labor required of the operator. It should be mechanically simple to avoid fouling or jamming which can be a common problem in a pinestraw baling application because of pine cones, branches, vines and other material which are inevitably raked and gathered along with the desirable pinestraw.